


no more bridges

by dinosaur



Series: ziall magical realism ficathon [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Balloons, Gen, Magical Realism, Other, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6874948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/dinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Then again, Zayn thinks, looking at Niall’s face, the way his magic lives like a sparkle under his skin, the warmth that surrounds him, hot enough to keep a coffee pot roasted on good days, the color of his eyes that matches the sky around them precisely – Niall’s a bit weird anyway. </p><p>Zayn’s never met a strato-dweller before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no more bridges

**Author's Note:**

> part of an [ongoing prompted series](http://wepush.tumblr.com/tagged/nzmr) to add more ziall content to the magical realism tag. post for this fic at [x](http://wepush.tumblr.com/post/144472104430/).
> 
> niall and zayn are both trans.
> 
> title from the beast by imogen heap

 

 

The balloon feels like water. It’s smooth under Zayn’s hands, too smooth to be real. It stretches beneath their feet, a complex collection of spells and a seaweed-silicone hybrid that’s the latest rage for ballowns. Hot air balloon with towns perched like crowns on their heads.

It’s unreal.

Niall’s proud of it. Zayn looks down to watch Niall’s hands rub small circles over the balloon, again and again, smiling like he can’t help it.

“Are they all this smooth?” Zayn asks, the words almost stolen away under the wind.

“Mm,” Niall hums and flops back against the balloon. It molds to him easily, cups his slim hips, the mismatched metal of his knees. He’s still only in his binder and exercise shorts. It looks strange with the boots he’s still wearing.

Then again, Zayn thinks, looking at Niall’s face, the way his magic lives like a sparkle under his skin, the warmth that surrounds him, hot enough to keep a coffee pot roasted on good days, the color of his eyes that matches the sky around them precisely – Niall’s a bit weird anyway.

Zayn’s never met a strato-dweller before.

“It’s like,” Niall turns over on an arm to look at Zayn, “The older a ballown is, the smoother it is, yeah? Air wears away at it.”

“Sky weathering?”

Niall laughs, “Exactly.”

“Hm.”

Zayn watches a cloud break apart on the side of the balloon, not 4 meters from their feet.

“Is it weird?” Niall’s fingers are pressed in against the balloon.

“Bit,” Zayn admits, “But not bad.”

“How weird?”

Zayn quirks a smile, “A bit weird.”

“Zaaayn,” Niall whines, grinning.

Zayn crinkles at him, drops back into the balloon. She refrains from shuddering as it molds itself to her.

“You know down in London, we’re still trying to figure out clean energy, right. I take the tube to work. Louis has a _bike_.”

“Weird,” Niall says, listing into her side a bit.

Zayn shakes her head.

“How does all of it work, then? What do you do with your magics?”

Niall’s eyes are bright and open, curious, unjudging.

“Usually, not much.” Niall’s face twists. “It goes dormant if you don’t use it, you know,” Zayn says, soft.

The sky above them rolls with a cloud front, a faint flicker of magic keeping it domed well above them, well above the simple buildings. The sheer enormity of what Niall can do, what everyone who lives here, can do, leaves Zayn breathless.

“How sad,” Niall says quietly.

Zayn glances over and sees a tear trail down Niall’s cheek.

“Hey, hey,” she curls into him, “Hey, teary, its fine –“

“S’not,” Niall sniffles, catches Zayn’s arm with both of his hands.

“It really is, I promise. We’ve got good, normal, occasionally ramen-budget lives.”

Niall shakes his head again. He takes one hand away to cup Zayn’s cheek. Magic flickers like an echo of his heartbeat, strong enough to vibrate across Zayn’s body. She resists shivering.

Leaning close enough Zayn could count his freckles, Niall swallows hard. Tears line his eyelashes like trapped diamonds.

“How lonely,” Niall whispers, looking at Zayn like she’s something to be soft with.

Zayn has to clear her throat twice to whisper back, “I’m not lonely.”

She has an entire world of people, a family bigger than a football team. Louis is waiting for her to walk in the door, back home.

“Not,” Niall’s thumb rubs along the top of Zayn’s cheekbone, firm, “that kind of lonely.” The magic in him burns and sharpens the color of his eyes.

It builds like a crescendo, like the best part of a good song and a night out. The overblown, whited out place inside Zayn _aches_.  She tries to tug at it a bit, tries to pull out a sliver of _something_ , just, just to see but it swirls away from her, a long-lost memory, foggy at the edges. She lets it go, feeling empty.

Dormant.

Tears spill over Niall’s cheeks like he can feel it.

With his magic so close, basically twined around them both, Zayn realizes, there’s no way he wouldn’t.

She looks away.

“Just want,” Niall says, low and careful. Zayn can feel his eyes on her. “Just want you to be able to hold what belongs to you, Zayno.” His hand moves down to fit to the concave home of her collarbone.

Zayn breathes deep, feeling Niall move with her like dancing.

“Magic belongs to people like you, Niall.” People who live on balloons made of technology and faith and live life level with the stars. Not people who live in grungy flats in a grungy city lost under storm cover.

“No,” Niall shakes his head and a strand of his hair flicks across Zayn’s shoulder. “No.”

Zayn smiles sadly, “Yeah.”

“No.”

Zayn sighs.

The magic in Niall’s bones grows antsy, shifting against their skin visibly enough their hair moves. Niall’s chin is set.

“You can’t just wish something true, Niall. Magic doesn’t work that way.”

“No,” Niall agrees, “But magic does work through wishes.”

Fear spikes down Zayn’s spine.

“Don’t,” she fists her hands in Niall’s shirt, “Don’t.”

Niall’s jaw flexes. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t use your magic on this,” Zayn tugs at Niall, pulls their foreheads together. Niall smells like the sun, magic so hot is burns like ozone.

Niall closes his eyes. A tear slips down his cheek.

“Promise me,” Zayn brushes her thumb under Niall’s eye, feels his eyelashes flutter.

A tremble runs through Niall.

“Promise,” Zayn whispers. “Promise you won’t wish my magic back to me.”

“I,” Niall swallows.

“Promise.”

Niall says, “I promise,” and his magic dissipates like a door slammed. The chill of it going makes Zayn’s chest ache.

Only the magic going, Zayn tells herself, not anything else.

She’s fine.  

 

 

\--

 

 

Magic feels like burning.

When Niall is six, he loses himself in a cloud. The light filters through his fingers like lacksidasical butterflies. Stretching his arms pulls the bubble of magic taut, formless but contoured around his body. The air tries to pull him faster, tries to pull him down and away but his magic holds him fast, twines oxygen pure into his lungs and gravity into his bones.

Heat locks into him, warms him from the inside. He closes his eyes and welcomes it, close, close, closer.

When Niall is 20, he loses himself in a city. He finds Zayn.

Zayn stares at him from the end of the alley, sheltered in the soft tangerine of a street light and how strange it is, that there should be places even in this small space where the light doesn’t touch. Up home, light is everywhere.

Niall stares at the wings of Louis and Zayn’s collarbones, matching dark arcs. He misses the first thing they say to him.

The second, the “Fucking hell,” Louis tosses out like a compliment, he gets loud and clear.

“Hi?” He tries.

“Fuck,” Zayn says.

And that’s that.

They’re kinder than they should be, really.

“You’re just a spot of sunshine, aren’t you,” Louis pinches Niall’s cheek that first night, after nachos and after Niall has scribbled schematics of his ballown, trying to explain.

Niall laughs, ducks his head into his shoulder.

When Niall looks up, Zayn is smiling at him, her eyes impossibly bright and her fingers elegant around a cuppa.

They stare at each other for a moment, and Niall feels heat crawl down his spine, feels breathless with the nonmagic of it.

Zayn laughs quietly and winks.

That too, burns.

Like he did then, Niall tugs the feeling close to himself, relishes it, lets himself float.

That night, he says goodbye and he can feel Zayn watch him go, the spot in-between his shoulders, hidden under his binder, soft and malleable, aching for her hands.

The first time she touches him is to balance his landing.

The second, to stop him from mistaking the estrogen pills on the counter as pain meds.

The twenty-ninth, to cup his jaw, bring them together like nuclear fusion.

Well into when he stops counting, she asks – orders him to leave her magic alone. To stop his magic from trying to share a flame with hers.

Everything runs cold.

 

 

 


End file.
